mh wrote:
Not at all, and it doesn’t help in the discussion to mock people who do care about privacy and don’t want to be tracked by everybody and his dog on every flight.
I am certainly not mocking you – but how then do you deal with the fact that your car is tracked every day by government agencies? How do you deal with the fact that, certainly in The Netherlands and I imagine many other countries, the military will track you down to roughly 100ft AGL even if your transponder is off?
It’s not the government – it is everybody else.
For example – If I know that you, for example, are working in banking, private equity, or major construction projects, I can casually track what you are doing by monitoring your aircraft movements tapping into the private ground stations which record and store Mode-S information.
In that case you need to avoid any site which does GAR form processing because they will have the most potentially damaging stuff on you.
But yes this is a problem for some. Avoid reading out your destination on the radio when getting the departure info, too.
Peter_Mundy wrote:
I am certainly not mocking you – but how then do you deal with the fact that your car is tracked every day by government agencies? How do you deal with the fact that, certainly in The Netherlands and I imagine many other countries, the military will track you down to roughly 100ft AGL even if your transponder is off?
I am not too much concerned about the government or the military when they use the data for flight safety or military defence, which is why I would like to use ADS-B as good tool for ATC or traffic and it could result in more freedom dur to less protected airspace needed. But neither ATC, nor the government or the military should care who I am in the first place, unless they have a mandate to follow my movement. And no civil person should care, either. If I want to be tracked, there is enough technology available and if I fly long legs over water or uninhabited areas, I do use a SPOT, for instance. But where I fly or how i fly is none of anyone’s business, unless they want to fly at the same location at the same time or I want to go through their protected airspace. But everyone can watch the movements on FR24 or even adsbexchange today. And those folks (exchange for stronger word here) are very eager to protect their own privacy, whilst showing no respect whatsoever for those of anyone else. It always amazes me how easy it is to get people to throw away their basic liberties.
For what it’s worth, an anonymised random ID would do the trick in my view. There is no need to transmit the callsign of the aircraft.
I can totally accept other points of view, and I can get when people like to be tracked. I can’t get why it should be a problem that I sometimes don’t want to be tracked and do want to be asked before publishing my data. And now there is no other option than to dismiss ADS-B. and sometimes even just turn off the XPDR.
Peter wrote:
The total emphasis during PPL training for keeping a lookout, but much more importantly the denial within the training system that most traffic is never spotted.
The privacy argument doesn’t bite on me. My cellphone provider knows already all there is to know about my whereabouts and I’m pretty sure the authorities can access it without me ever knowing one way or the other. ADS-B doesn’t make that situation any worse, so it’s a net plus.
And I live close to a military airfield and control center, the local ACC often tells us “I have an unidentified echo…”, the only way to not be on the primary radar is to stay on the ground.
Cobalt wrote:
It’s not the government – it is everybody else.
Most people in the US see the privacy issue as being privacy in relation to the government, for the simple reason that history has shown government monitoring leads in time to taxation. Power plus information inevitably equals control. To view it otherwise is very naive IMHO.
I think Peter is correct in his assumption that the ADS-B privacy issue in the US is dealt with by the autonomous mode of UAT. The airspace in which non-autonomous ADS-B Out will be required in the US is a relatively small fraction of the total, and outside of that airspace revealing identity will not be required. It has been discussed and debated before on EuroGA, but I believe that the Mode S debate and very limited implementation of Mode S in the US years ago set a precedent in this regard.
mh wrote:
I can totally accept other points of view, and I can get when people like to be tracked. I can’t get why it should be a problem that I sometimes don’t want to be tracked and do want to be asked before publishing my data
I have absolutely no problem with your point of view but I believe that the time when we could opt out of surveillance is long past – be it in an aeroplane, in a car, using your cell phone or even just walking through any city. Not having a transponder on is not going to solve your problem given the data sharing of airfields and spotter groups :(
